Of Men Who Keep Not Eternity in Mind

Most, although certainly not all, people in public life, especially those who inhabit the darkest recesses of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” but not excluding many of those who inhabit the religious indifferentist naturalist “right” are either ignorant about, indifferent to or contemptuous of any thought of eternity. These people are literally hellbent on making Nicolo Machiavelli’s amorality to be so much child’s play by inventing whatever they want about their political opponents as they lie with impunity and state such lies with such vigorous force as to make it appear that anyone who dares refute their deceits are themselves deceivers.

United States Representative Adam Schiff (D-California), for one, did this repeatedly throughout the presidency of Donald John Trump as he claimed he had “proof” of how Trump “colluded” with the Russians to win the presidency on November 8, 2016, and as he worked to create a narrative with hearsay “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, a trusted aide of then former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., that led to Trump’s first kangaroo impeachment proceeding in 2020 while putting pressure on Twitter to censor any news that revealed what he was doing or even criticized him in the slightest. Schiff’s attempts at censorship was called out by attorney Jonathan Turley and by the Real Clear Investigations journalist, Paul Sperry, who revealed Eric Ciaramella’s name in 2019:

“We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do.

One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee.

In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry.

Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources. Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.”

Rather than simply refute the allegation, Schiff wanted Sperry and other critics silenced. His office reportedly laid out steps to cleanse Twitter of their criticism, including an instruction to “remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content.”

The date of Schiff’s non-public letter in November 2020 is notable: Earlier that year, I wrote a column for The Hill criticizing Schiff for pushing for censorship of misinformation in a letter that he sent to social media companies. His office promptly objected to the very suggestion that Schiff supported censorship.

We now know Schiff was actively seeking to censor specific critics on social media. These likely were viewed as more than “requests” since Schiff was sending public letters threatening possible legislative action against these same companies. He wanted his critics silenced on social media. After all, criticizing his investigations or staff must, by definition, be misinformation — right?

His office seems to have indicated they knew Twitter was using shadow-banning or other techniques to suppress certain disfavored writers. In the letter, his staff asked Twitter to “label and reduce the visibility of any content.”

Twitter, however, drew the line with Schiff; one of its employees simply wrote, “no, this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this.”

The “this” referred to in this case was raw political censorship. And even a company that maintained one of the largest censorship programs in history could not bring itself to do what Schiff was demanding — but the demand itself is telling.

Not only does it show how dishonest some politicians have been in denying censorship while secretly demanding it, it also shows the insatiable appetite created by censorship. The article in question, written by Sperry, is a good example. Sperry has denied ever supporting QAnon conspiracy theories, as Schiff’s office charged. Yet even if Sperry’s account about Schiff’s staffer was wildly untrue, that should make it easier to rebut publicly.

The move by Schiff to ban Sperry and others on Twitter — and to remove content — is highly ironic. Schiff has been criticized repeatedly for promoting “misinformation” and for relying on unidentified “sources” for his claims of Trump’s criminality. For example, Schiff pushed the false claim that the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation; he also was criticized for pushing false narratives of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election.

Nevertheless, I would equally oppose any effort to ban Schiff from social media, although that is hardly likely given the demonstrated political bias of past censorship efforts.

As for Sperry, he was later permanently suspended by Twitter, which I also criticized.

Schiff is unlikely to be deterred by the release of these communications. He recently sent a letter to Facebook, warning it not to relax its censorship efforts. His letter, written with Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), reminded Facebook that some lawmakers are watching the company “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts” — and suggested they may be forced to exercise that oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.”

Schiff’s actions embody the slippery slope of censorship. By labeling his critics as QAnon supporters or purveyors of “misinformation,” he sought to have allies in social media “disappear” critics like Sperry — yet he found that even those allies could not stomach his demands. Given Twitter’s censorship of even satirical sites, it was akin to being turned down by a Kanye West podcast as being too extreme.

With the disclosure of apparent FBI involvement in Twitter’s censorship program, the release of the Schiff files is another rare insight into how government officials attempted to enlist social media companies for censorship by surrogate or proxy. That is precisely why many in the media, political and business establishments have mobilized against Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter who has released these compromising files.

In a recent tweet, Schiff chastised Musk and demanded more answers from the Twitter CEO. While insisting that “I don’t support censorship,” Schiff asked Musk if he would “commit to providing the public with actual answers and data, not just tweets?” Well, Musk just did precisely that.

The “actual answer” is that Schiff has long sought to silence his critics, and Musk has exposed the underbelly of censorship — which is where we found Adam Schiff. (“We Don’t Do This”: Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship.)

Back from holiday vacation, I found an interesting email waiting for me in my inbox from Matt Taibbi, the independent journo Elon Musk tasked with reviewing and releasing internal Twitter documents about decisions to censor content and ban users from the platform.

“Paul,” Taibbi wrote, “just found a crazy email on Twitter — did you know Adam Schiff’s staff . . . asked Twitter to have you banned?”

I was gobsmacked. This would explain why Twitter could never give me a reason for suspending my account, even though I had broken none of its rules.

Schiff, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made his “request” to ban me through his staff in a November 2020 memo to Twitter. Three months later, in early February 2021, I was kicked off the platform.

Why would a congressional leader sworn to protect the Constitution and First Amendment want to muzzle a veteran journalist? Like authoritarians everywhere, Schiff did not like critical reporting. The man who vowed to “protect our Democracy” from Donald Trump wanted to censor a free press.

In articles for RealClearInvestigations, I outed his anonymous “whistleblower” from the first impeachment of President Trump. It was Eric Ciaramella, a Democrat who had worked in the Trump White House as an Obama holdover. I also exposed Ciaramella’s prior relationship with one of Schiff’s top staffers on the impeachment committee, Sean Misko.

My reporting cast fresh doubts on Schiff’s claims that the 2019 impeachment process happened organically. The New York Times had already busted Schiff lying about prior contacts with the whistleblower. Initially, Schiff publicly stated his office never spoke with the whistleblower before he filed his complaint against President Trump, when in fact a Schiff staffer had huddled with him, something Schiff’s spokesman Patrick Boland was forced to admit after the Times broke the story. (The staffer was never identified.) The prior contacts led to suspicions Schiff’s office helped the whistleblower craft his complaint as part of a partisan operation.

In the censorship demands Schiff’s office sent Twitter, Misko and the “impeachment inquiry” are mentioned. It’s not clear if Ciaramella is, too, since some names are blacked out. Schiff demanded Twitter “remove any and all content”’ related to them.

Unlike in other cases where Twitter did censor accounts, officials there originally argued that “this isn’t feasible.”

At the time, Twitter was about the only media outlet where the names of Schiff’s impeachment operatives were circulating. The Washington press corps had conspired to protect the so-called whistleblower and cover up his identity. The Washington Post even scolded me for identifying him, claiming I was putting his life in danger. But this was a bluff. I was told by his family, as well as impeachment investigators, that he had received no credible threats.

In his list of demands, Schiff tried to justify banning me by claiming I was promoting “false QAnon conspiracies,” which I have never done and I challenge Schiff to produce evidence to back up his defamatory remarks.

Schiff knew better. He knew “QAnon” was a trigger for Twitter censors, who were suppressing QAnon posts. Yet even Twitter’s liberal gatekeepers appeared skeptical of Schiff’s claims: “If it is related to QAnon it should already be deamplified.” (Emphasis in original.)

Schiff knows something about promoting false conspiracies. In 2017, he took to the microphone in a televised House Intelligence Committee hearing and read into the congressional record a screed of wild conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia from the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier.

He trumpeted them as if they were fact. But they were false — every one of them — as Special Counsel John Durham has proven in court documents, expanding on what Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz found in his earlier report.

We now know most of the preposterous rumors Schiff dramatically read into the public record came from a source who was invented by the dossier’s authors. In his hyping of the dossier, Schiff smeared and defamed not only Trump, but also Carter Page, a low-level Trump campaign adviser, whom Schiff falsely painted as a Russian agent.

The next year, Schiff would be caught lying about the so-called Nunes Memo exposing FBI abuse of the FISA wiretap process to spy on Page. Schiff claimed then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes misled the public when he said the FBI heavily relied on the debunked dossier to swear out the warrants. In his own memo, Schiff, as ranking member, insisted the FBI’s warrants were based on other evidence and were above-board.

In 2019, the scathing Horowitz Report proved it was Nunes who was telling the truth. Schiff, who had access to the same classified FISA information as Nunes, knew better.

This is the real spreader of falsehoods. Nonetheless, Twitter promised Schiff they would “review” my account — “again,” which suggests this wasn’t the first time Schiff had tried to silence me. Or the last. Were there other communications? Phone calls? Texts?

Months after Schiff lobbied Twitter to ban me and remove all the impeachment-related content from its platform, his communications director and chief of staff — Patrick Boland — tried to intimidate my editors at RCI into retracting the impeachment stories I broke a year earlier.

In his emails, Boland invoked “the events of January 6,” warning our stories could “result in actual violence” if they remained online. Over time, Boland’s demands became more and more strident. But my editors refused to give in to the bullying.

It wasn’t about “safety.” It was about wanting to avoid any scrutiny for their actions.

After joining Twitter in June 2016, I tweeted more than 20,100 tweets and I amassed more than 340,000 followers — all without any problems, without any suspensions. Until Schiff exercised his vendetta against me.

He appears to have secretly interfered with my ability to do my job for almost two years. Calling Twitter “social media” is a misnomer. In many ways, Twitter is simply the media now. As a working journalist, you need Twitter to do your job. News is broken there. Corporations and government post their press releases there. Key information and data are archived there.

If a powerful government official prevented me from promoting my stories, including my New York Post columns, on the nation’s digital town square, how is that not state censorship?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, now battling for the speakership, has vowed to block Schiff from serving as the intelligence panel’s top Democrat. But Schiff has bigger ambitions. He is said to be planning a run at the Senate, where he could arguably have more power and influence to silence free speech. (Paul Sperry: How Democrat Adam Schiff abused his power to demand I be kicked off Twitter.)

House Republicans are preparing to strip Adam Schiff of his Intelligence Committee seat, and his media allies are rallying to the California Democrat’s defense. Maybe that’s because he was such a useful source against Republicans over the years, as the latest documents released by Twitter show.

The media says House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s motive for removing the ranking House Intel member is retribution for Nancy Pelosi’s unprecedented decision to strip two Republicans of committee seats in the last Congress. No doubt Republicans want Democrats to meditate on the consequences of their norm-busting. But Mr. McCarthy has offered a good reason for giving the Californian the boot: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public.”

That’s true. The most well documented example was in early 2018, in response to then Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s effort to inform the public about the FBI’s abuse of the FISA warrant process as part of its Trump-Russia collusion probe.

Mr. Nunes released a memo summarizing the committee’s findings that the FBI had obtained surveillance warrants from the secret FISA court against former Trump staffer Carter Page during the 2016 campaign; that the Steele dossier financed by the Clinton campaign formed an “essential” part of the surveillance applications; and that the FBI failed to tell the FISA court that dossier author Christopher Steele had political and media ties.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed all of this two years later in his report on the FBI’s probe. But in early 2018 Mr. Schiff fought release of the Nunes memo, and he released a memo of his own that he claimed was a more accurate summary of the evidence.

Though he had access to the same documents, the Schiff memo trashed the Nunes document and he deceived the public. His summary claimed the “FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the [FISA] process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.” That was all false. Yet nearly all of the media seized on the Schiff document to declare the Nunes memo “a joke,” and keep the collusion deceit going for another year.

The latest Twitter documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi have exposed another Schiff falsehood. As news broke that Mr. Nunes had submitted his then-classified memo to Congress, Twitter exploded with the hashtag “#ReleaseTheMemo.” Mr. Schiff—still trying to block the memo’s release—joined ranking Senate Judiciary Democrat Dianne Feinstein to publicly claim this hashtag was driven by “Russian bots and trolls” in an effort to “manipulate public opinion,” “influence congressional action” and “undermine Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller’s investigation” into the collusion claim.

The Democrats asked Twitter and Facebook to “expose and deactivate accounts involved in this influence operation.” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse released their own public letter bemoaning “Russian agents” who so “eagerly manipulated innocent American citizens.”

The documents now show that Twitter executives promptly reported back to Democrats that it had not “identified any significant activity connected to Russia.” As one internal communication explained: “We investigated, found that engagement was overwhelmingly organic.” One Twitter employee in an email advised telling an aide to Sen. Blumenthal that it was in his “boss’s best interest to not go out there on this because it could come back to make him look silly.” Yet Mr. Schiff and company kept up their smears against Mr. Nunes and his memo.

Mr. Schiff has other deceptions in his record, including numerous false claims that he had secret evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. He never produced any, and neither did the Mueller report.

***

We rehearse all this because Mr. Schiff and his media friends are claiming he is being targeted unfairly by Republicans. But as a ranking Democrat and later the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, he had a particular duty to be honest because he had access to classified information that the press can’t verify. He could deceive without fear of contradiction until months later. Payback or not, Adam Schiff has earned his ouster from the Intelligence Committee. (Adam Schiff, Disinformation Man.)

Adam Schiff has lied his way to national prominence, and he has bullied others in a manner worthy of any Chinese Communist Party apparatchik. He is an authoritarian who does not believe that those who oppose him have any right to expose his misdeeds in pursuit of the crippling of the presidency of Donald John Trump by means of completely fabricated evidence. He is simply one of many inside the Washington, District of Columbia Capital Beltway who believe in one party rule and the use of national security apparatus to silence and stigmatize all opposition. Adam Schiff, who supports one moral evil after another under cover of the civil law, is just one of many who are in for a rude awakening at the moment of his Particular Judgment if he does not convert before he dies, something that neither he nor any of his confederates understands or could even accept as true barring a miraculous conversion to the true Faith.

The Deep State effort’s to “get Trump” from the moment he announced his first presidential campaign in 2015 to the present time contrasts sharply with the extent to which the politicized and weaponized United States Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.)  have gone to protect Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton during “Email-gate” in 2015 and 2016 and to protect Hunter Biden from 2019 to the present day, to say much about the how, just five months after Minister of Injustice Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher personally authorized the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago complex in Florida to retrieve classified documents, its apparatchiks are permitting Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, own lawyers to “search” for classified documents that have been in Biden’s possession and control since January 20, 2017:

A favorite saying among insiders is that two weeks is a lifetime in politics, meaning anything can happen. In Joe Biden’s case, a mere five days was enough to turn his world upside down. 

The news Saturday that more classified documents were found in his Delaware home ends a bizarre week that suddenly put Biden’s presidency in peril and further damaged the credibility of the Department of Justice. 

When reports emerged last Monday that multiple classified documents were found in an office Biden used after leaving the White House as vice president, the propaganda media circled the wagons around him by insisting he’s no Donald Trump. They had a point — up to a point. 

But when reports two days later said a second batch of supposedly secret papers was found in Biden’s Delaware garage, the wall of media protection showed some cracks as the differences between the presidents’ cases narrowed. And when an additional classified page was found in Biden’s Delaware library, and a special prosecutor was appointed Thursday to investigate him, the defenders made a hasty retreat. 

Then came Saturday’s finding, which proves the president was serially sloppy with America’s secrets. 

The result is that Trump now looks like a lucky man while Biden looks like a man whose luck has run out. 

It’s been a feature of Trump’s political career that he’s been fortunate in his enemies. Say “Hillary Clinton” and it’s enough said. 

But Trump’s foolish standoff with Justice over classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago put him on course for criminal charges, especially when Attorney General Merrick Garland put a hard-charging special prosecutor on the case. 

Biden clearly enjoyed Trump’s predicament, having earlier urged that his predecessor be prosecuted for his conduct leading up to the Capitol riot. Asked about Trump’s handling of classified documents in September, Biden crowed on “60 Minutes” that he didn’t understand “how anyone could be that irresponsible.” 

Thanks to that quote and his own misconduct, Biden has come to Trump’s rescue, with his multiple document stashes making it nearly impossible for Trump to be prosecuted if Biden isn’t. All the more so because of the way Garland, solidifying his reputation as a bitter partisan hack, kept secret the first Biden document finding of Nov. 2 until after the midterm elections and seemed to be hiding each new finding until it was forced into the open. 

In fact, it was only after leaks that Garland felt the need to even the presidential playing field and appoint veteran prosecutor Robert Hur to probe Garland’s boss. The curse of interesting times strikes again. 

Yet to see Biden’s case as merely a legal, politically inconvenient parallel to Trump’s is to miss the much larger potential for trouble the president faces. 

All the president’s men and media helpers won’t be able to limit his predicament to the classified documents. For one thing, the timing of the discoveries couldn’t be worse, coming just as Republicans take control of the House with a pledge to end the see-no-evil approach Dems took to Biden family corruption. 

Long before the document bombshells, GOP leaders vowed to follow the millions upon millions of dollars that Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, Joe’s brother, got abroad from selling access to Joe. Based on the contents of Hunter’s laptop, it’s certain that Joe benefited from foreign payments. 

As Rep. James Comer of Kentucky put it, “We’re not investigating Hunter Biden. We’re investigating Joe Biden.” 

The quest will be to find how much money Joe Biden reaped and what favors he did in return, primarily as vice president and even possibly as president. 

The second reason why the document scandal can’t be isolated is because the papers, some of which reportedly involved foreign nations, were found in locations related to the family scandals. It’s as if the two separate streams are joined as one. 

For example, Hunter lives in the Delaware house, raising concerns he might have seen the documents, which were not secured, and disclosed the contents. 

Also, the first batch turned up in the Penn Biden Center, a sinecure the Ivy League school put together to give Biden a place to hang his hat when he left the vice presidency in early 2017. 

Starting then, the University of Pennsylvania paid him an astounding $900,000 through 2019, despite just nine reported public engagements with students. In addition, The Post, citing public records, reports the university got $54.6 million in donations from China from 2014 through June 2019, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016. 

Many universities received big donations from China as the Communist regime tried to ingratiate itself in America — and sometimes plant spies — but the windfall to Penn coincided with Hunter’s business ventures in China. 

Hunter, Joe enmeshed 

Recall that in December of 2013, the son flew to Beijing on Air Force 2 with his father, who was the Obama administration’s point man on the country. By the time they headed home, Hunter had secured a $1.5 billion investment from a bank controlled by the government. 

A similar pattern played out in other countries, especially Ukraine. 

Not surprisingly, Hunter played a role in his father’s relationship to Penn. According to Fox News, laptop emails show the former vice president wanted his son to attend key meetings with then-university president Amy Gutmann. 

One 2016 exchange has Hunter tell a business partner he might need to reschedule a meeting with the prime minister of the Ivory Coast because “the Guttman [sic] mtg is a must-attend for me per Dad.” 

Other emails show discussions of a possible role for Hunter at the center. 

Dozens of exchanges were between Hunter and Kathy Chung. She had served as an aide to two senators before Hunter recommended her to his father and she was hired in 2012 as Joe’s gatekeeper in the VP office. 

Fox found at least two instances where Chung also helped facilitate Hunter’s influence-peddling schemes. 

In October 2015, Hunter and Chung arranged a video conference between Joe Biden and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, at a time when Hunter hoped to do business with Slim. 

Earlier that year, Fox reports, “Chung sent Hunter and other members of the Biden family an invitation to attend a State Department luncheon hosted by his father honoring Chinese President Xi Jinping.” 

As Joe Biden was leaving the VP office in 2017, Hunter asked Chung to work for him directly. She apparently declined and followed Joe to the Penn Biden Center.

Chung reportedly was questioned by law enforcement about the classified documents found at the center. Gutmann fared better. After being nominated by Biden, she is America’s ambassador to Germany. 

Regardless of Garland’s intent for the special prosecutor handling Biden’s document case, Comer, Jim Jordan and other GOP inquisitors are not going to stand down. Their probes will serve as fact-checkers and hold Garland accountable while giving the public hope the Biden family grifters will finally face the music. (Classified documents scandal puts Biden presidency in peril.)

Speaker Kevin McCarthy went on a rant Thursday when asked about the differences between the Trump and Biden document dramas — and rightly so.

The idea that President Joe Biden’s case is entirely different from ex-President Donald Trump’s is the media’s first line of defense for the current prez. And yes, lots of details differ.

But, as McCarthy noted, many of them make Biden look worse. The speaker’s demolition of the apples-to-apples critique was a powerful performance, slicing all the issues expertly.

He rightly pointed to the irony that a guy “on ’60 Minutes’ that was so concerned about President Trump’s documents” now has been revealed to have kept secret documents “for years out in the open in different locations,” none of them secure.

Now to the double standard: “Did he utilize the Justice Department to raid President Trump?” And: “You watched them leak photos of files of President Trump; where’s the photos of President Biden’s documents?”

That is: “Why would they go after a political opponent that way, why would they leak photos and say all this, why would they go through the former first lady’s clothing, why would they go through his son’s clothing, why would they raid as they did?”

Meanwhile, Biden’s “explanation” is straight out of the old Steve Martin “I forgot” routine. He says he doesn’t remember any of it, and his lawyers say he shouldn’t say anything — which doesn’t oblige him to stonewall; it’s just an excuse for claiming “I hope to have a chance” to talk about it “soon.”

Nor does his lawyers’ claim that it was all “inadvertently misplaced” add up: He wrote a book off this stuff.

And sent lawyers to go through the old office. As McCarthy noted, “If you call a lawyer to remove something from your office, you must have known ahead of time.”

An ironic side note: At least one House Democrat has a novel defense of Biden. Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson reportedly says, “I’m suspicious of the timing of it. . . . Things can be planted on people, places and things . . . and then discovered conveniently.” (View hosts Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar also find the timing suspicious!)

Hilarious: “Possibly planted evidence” was also a Trump defense after the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Anyway, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s own Trump precedent has now forced him to name a special counsel to probe Biden’s docu-drama, too. But Garland still won’t name an independent prosecutor for the Biden family foreign-influence-peddling case, which clearly implicates Joe as well as Hunter.

It’s beyond obvious that Biden took the docs with him after his time as vice president ended, mostly with an eye on using them in writing that book, then later moved them to his UPenn office. (All without registering them with the National Archives, which has been notably quiet in this case, unlike in Trump’s.)

By the way: Biden surely used a ghostwriter for his book. Gen. David Petraeus faced felony charges (he cut a plea deal) for sharing classified docs with his biographer.

Yes, Biden and Trump’s cases differ in endless ways. But the Mar-a-Lago case prompted the media and some in government to amp up the “possible charges” against the ex-prez, producing innovative legal theories that now clearly should apply to the ex-veep-and-current-prez. 

Why don’t they? As McCarthy pointedly noted, this nation is supposed to believe in “equal justice for all.”  (Speaker McCarthy eviscerates the 'Biden's document mess is different' defense.)

"Like a car, only better." That slogan for Corvette sold a lot of cars, but, until last week, it was never used with regard to classified documents. President Joe Biden responded to a question Thursday from Fox's Peter Doocy about the disclosure of additional classified documents found in his garage next to his corvette at his home in Delaware. The president responded "My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street."

Like his car, it sounded like classified documents are even better to house in a garage.

There is no question that Biden's 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is one hot car. Most of us would take the Stingray over an assortment of classified Ukraine briefing papers or memos. However, foreign intelligence may be more discerning.

The fact is that the argument that you protected classified documents as carefully as your Corvette will not cut it with the criminal code. As the Justice Department stated in the Trump filings, their mishandling of classified material can be a criminal act. The Justice Department cited provisions included 18 U.S.C. 793 (Gathering or Transmitting Defense Information) and 18 U.S.C. 2071 (Concealment, Removal, or Mutilation Generally).

Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe has previously run through the criminal code on what Donald Trump should be charged with, including witness tampering, obstruction of justice, criminal election violations, Logan Act violations, extortion, espionage, and treason by Trump or his family. 

Tribe even insisted that "without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt, and the crimes are obvious." Most recently, that included a charge of attempted murder of former Vice President Mike Pence.

Yet, when Biden was accused of the same unlawful possession of classified information, Tribe needed no further evidence. He declared "One is criminal (Trump). And one is not criminal (Biden). Say it in plain English."

Mueller's top aide Andrew Weissmann added "It’s not a crime to accidentally take and retain govt docs. If upon learning that you have docs, you return them, there is no crime."

Clearly, the Justice Department did not agree. In order to appoint a special counsel, the Attorney General had to find "that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted." That does not mean that there is criminal conduct in this case, but the law prefers, at least for appearance’s sake, to wait for a modicum of evidence before making final judgments.

Biden's counsel has insisted that this is merely "inadvertently misplaced." That statement is belied by a couple of facts. 

First, it seems that these documents were likely moved more than once. Biden left office as vice president in 2017. He presumably took these documents at that time. However, they ended up in different places, including one document found separately from the "garage files" in the residence.

Moreover, Biden had an office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after finishing his term in 2017. On February 8, 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement says that it opened its doors in Washington, D.C. 

Biden could not have moved into the D.C. office until later that year. So those documents had to be moved from another location with moving trucks and personnel. They then sat in the office for years as other classified documents sat in his garage with his Corvette.

At some point, some documents were sent to the office and some to the residence and garage. What explained this division if it was not based on what the then vice president was working on?

The "inadvertent" defense hardly fits neatly with these facts. Moreover, if Biden worked off any of these documents for his book (which dealt with some of the underlying subjects like Ukraine), the inadvertent defense is not only shattered but could be cited later as an effort to deceive the public.

There are already concerns over the public statements from the president and his staff. The White House was already aware that there was not just one but three discoveries (the Penn Biden office, the garage, and the residence) of classified documents. However, the president indicated that only the Penn Biden office documents were at issue.

Finally, there is a question about the timeline. There seemed to be a general lack of urgency from the government despite finding documents classified at the high "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information" (TS/SCI) level.

However, it took two days for the archives to notify the Justice Department. It then took seven days after the discovery for the FBI to do a risk assessment. Most notably, after the discovery of classified material in two locations, it was private counsel who discovered the last classified document. That was December 20th. It is not clear if the FBI asked or was allowed to conduct its own search before December 20th given the repeated discoveries in different locations.

While Garland finally made an appointment, he appears to have done so with one huge benefit to Biden. Unlike the sweeping mandate given the special counsel for Trump, the Biden mandate appears quite narrow. There was no reference to the alleged Biden influence peddling scandal, which long ago warranted a special counsel appointment.

We may soon, however, see an extraordinary historical development where both leading candidates for the presidency will be campaigning with their own assigned special counsels. (Biden's 'Corvette' excuse won't cut it. Special counsel has a lot to do.)

Merrick Garland doth protest too much as his Ministry of Injustice wanted Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, own attorneys to search for the classified documents inside his Wilmington, Delaware, residence secretly without the “interference” of the presence of FBI agents so as to keep the matter from the public until he was forced to send the FBI to do a search of the residence on January 20, 2023, after the scandal had become public despite his best efforts to keep the lid on it:

The Justice Department (DOJ) reportedly sent a secret letter to President Joe Biden’s personal attorneys to search his multiple residences for classified documents after the trove at the Penn Biden Center was unearthed on November 2.

The search for wrongdoing was widened after the DOJ and Biden’s personal attorneys agreed to hide the scandal from the American people.

The New York Times reported Friday that “[t]he quiet cooperation continued for weeks” between the aides and the DOJ. This not only tried to obscure the scandal from public view but reportedly refused to divulge that the second trove of classified documents was already unearthed at Biden’s home in Wilmington when CBS News first contacted the White House about the initial leak of classified documents stored at the Biden Penn Center.

It was then, during the plot to keep the scandal concealed from the public, the DOJ sent a letter to Biden’s personal attorneys and asked them to confirm that no other classified documents existed apart from the trove already unearthed, the Times reported.

It is unclear why or what Biden’s personal attorneys were originally seeking at the center funded in part by anonymous Chinese donations. The White House has refused to provide transparency on the unanswered mystery.

Only after about 25 classified documents — some of which are top secret — were found between three locations and publicly reported did the DOJ appoint a special counsel, a move Biden’s aides reportedly were trying to prevent.

Reported suspicion exists within the White House about how the scandal became public after it had been tightly under wraps for 68 days between eight of Biden’s closest aides and the Justice Department.

The president’s senior adviser, Anita Dunn, was most “adamant” about hiding the legal disaster from the American people because “the only thing that would create legal exposure would be drawing public attention to it,” the Times reported. The plot to keep the scandal hidden from the public was further fueled because the aides worried that “the very act of publicizing the discovery of the documents would create a political furor that would make the appointment of a special counsel unavoidable.”

That the Biden administration tried to conceal the scandal contradicts its claims of transparency. “There was transparency in doing what you’re supposed to do when these items were discovered,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre falsely claimed on January 12. (Report: DOJ Secretly Asked for Search for Classified Docs at Residence. Also see Turley: By November 2nd, The FBI Had Found Highly Classified Documents And Turned Down Offer To Search Biden House, Secrecy Is for Losers, Biden's 'no regrets' remarks about classified documents are infuriating and really, really dumb, and DOJ seizes more classified docs from Biden's Wilmington home after 12-hour search.)

The United States Department of Justice and the upper echelons of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been running a political protection racket for the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” (largely because many of them have been educated in hallowed halls of academe by leftist professors who used leftist textbooks) and, at the same time, a political hit racket upon anyone, especially Donald John Trump, who is seen as a threat to the “left’s” political and bureaucratic hegemony. The elite in the national security apparatus of the government of the United States of America believe that it is their right to serve as a Praetorian Guard to prevent the plebian class from influencing the course of public events, something that secular commentator Tucker Carlson noted as follows:

Unelected lifers in the federal agencies make the biggest decisions in American government and crush anyone who tries to rein them in and in the process, our democracy becomes a joke. Now, you may have noticed that the very first person in the Trump administration the agencies went after was Gen. Michael Flynn. Why Flynn? Because Mike Flynn was a career Army intel officer who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency. In other words, Mike Flynn knew exactly how the system worked, and as a result, he was capable of fighting back. Four days after Donald Trump's inauguration, the FBI lured Mike Flynn into a meeting without his lawyer, concocted a series of fake crimes and forced him to resign.

So, that's how things actually work in Washington. Let's stop lying about it. Joe Biden, meanwhile, whooped like a hyena when the Justice Department destroyed Mike Flynn. So, there is, we have to say, a certain perverse justice in watching something very similar happen to Joe Biden himself six years later. Joe Biden does not deserve our sympathy. He's being shafted, but don't weep for him, and yet, the rest of us do deserve a better system, an actual democracy. When people nobody voted for run everything, you are not living in a free country. (Tucker Carlson: Permanent Washington Does Not Want Biden To Run Again So They Are Euthanizing His Presidency.)

As insightful as Mr. Carlson’s remarks are, however, they are premised upon the belief that it is possible to have a “democratic republic” when most of the people who constitute its population are immersed what are in the objective order of things one unrepented sin after another and who believe in the secularized version of John Calvin’s premise that material success is the purpose of human existence (Calvin, heretic that he was, believed that material success was a sign of being predestined by divine election). Mr. Carlson would do well to familiarize himself with how a true democracy must be premised upon the rectitude of its citizens, and such rectitude is not possible in the normal course of events without having belief in, access, to, and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the great Dominican foe of Modernism and the Twentieth Century’s greatest exponent of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, explained the flaws inherent in democracies that lead to their decay and dissolution over time:

Democracy is an imperfect regime, as a regime in ratione regiminis, as a result of the lack of unity and continuity in the direction of interior and exterior affairs. Also this regime should only be for the perfect already capable of directing themselves—those virtuous and competent enough to pronounce as is fitting upon the very complicated problems on which the life of a great people depends. But it is always true to say as Saint Thomas noted that these virtuous and competent men are extremely rare; and democracy, supposing such perfection among subjects, cannot give it to them. From this point of view, democracy is a bit in politics what quietism is in spirituality; it supposes man has arrived, at the age or the state of perfection, even though he still may be a child. In treating him as a perfect person, democracy does not give him what is required to become one.

Since true virtue united to true competence is a rare thing among men, since the majority among them are incapable of governing and they have a need of being led, the regime which is the best for them is the one which can make up for their imperfection. This regimen perfectum in ratione regiminis, by reason of unity, continuity, and efficacy of direction towards a single end which is difficult to achieve is monarchy. Above all a tempered monarchy which is always attentive to the different forms of national activity. It is better than democracy or than the feudal regime. Monarchy assures the interior and exterior peace of a great nation, and permits her to long endure. (Dom Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “On Royal Government: translated by Andrew Strain, On Royal Government)

Men in public life must put First Things first, which means that they must be serious about the sanctification and salvation of souls, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in his last encyclical letter, Mirae Caritatis, May 25, 1902:

Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would rightly esteem and would make due provision for life everlasting, whose industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of human events. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

Pope Leo XIII had the sad duty to note, however, that most of the men of civic importance in the world one hundred eleven years ago, like most of the men of civic importance today, believe that they and their ideas can save the world, a version, of course of semi-Pelagianism (the heresy that contends human beings more or less stir up graces in themselves to be virtuous and to save themselves, a form of human "self-redemption" that is of the very blasphemous essence of the "American way").

How many hollow men (and one woman) of the two major political parties babble inanities as they promise us a "better" world and a more "secure" future if only we believe in their message of secular self-redemption and support their presidential campaigns during elections and their policies thereafter if elected?

Not one of them is an advocate for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen. Each of them, therefore, utters inanities about how this or that form of naturalism or religious indifferentism, or non-denominationalism is going to "improve" a world that can be improved only to the extent that individual souls cooperate with Sanctifying Grace and thus seek to root out sin in their own lives and to root it out, as far as is humanly possible, in the life of nation.

The civil leaders of Modernity have fallen into the description of modern "men of importance" written by Pope Leo XIII in Mirae Caritatis:

But alas! we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world as it were a fresh lease of life and prosperity, inasmuch as by their own energetic action they are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display. And yet, whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God, instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds. But the source and chief of all these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so much. For what can be more honourable or a more worthy object of desire than to be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state, he yet more closely associates and unites him with Himself. For there is this difference between the food of the body and that of the soul, that whereas the former is changed into our substance, the latter changes us into its own; so that St. Augustine makes Christ Himself say: "You shall not change Me into yourself as you do the food of your body, but you shall be changed into Me" (confessions 1. vii., c. x.).

Moreover, in this most admirable Sacrament, which is the chief means whereby men are engrafted on the divine nature, men also find the most efficacious help towards progress in every kind of virtue. And first of all in faith. In all ages faith has been attacked; for although it elevates the human mind by bestowing on it the knowledge of the highest truths, yet because, while it makes known the existence of divine mysteries, it yet leaves in obscurity the mode of their being, it is therefore thought to degrade the intellect. But whereas in past times particular articles of faith have been made by turns the object of attack; the seat of war has since been enlarged and extended, until it has come to this, that men deny altogether that there is anything above and beyond nature. Now nothing can be better adapted to promote a renewal of the strength and fervour of faith in the human mind than the mystery of the Eucharist, the "mystery of faith," as it has been most appropriately called. For in this one mystery the entire supernatural order, with all its wealth and variety of wonders, is in a manner summed up and contained: "He hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works, a merciful and gracious Lord; He hath given food to them that fear Him" (Psalm cx, 4-5). For whereas God has subordinated the whole supernatural order to the Incarnation of His Word, in virtue whereof salvation has been restored to the human race, according to those words of the Apostle; "He hath purposed...to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in Him" (Eph. i., 9-10), the Eucharist, according to the testimony of the holy Fathers, should be regarded as in a manner a continuation and extension of the Incarnation. For in and by it the substance of the incarnate Word is united with individual men, and the supreme Sacrifice offered on Calvary is in a wondrous manner renewed, as was signified beforehand by Malachy in the words: "In every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a pure oblation" (Mal. i., 11). And this miracle, itself the very greatest of its kind, is accompanied by innumerable other miracles; for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and the Blood; the species of bread and wine are sustained by the divine power without the support of any underlying substance; the Body of Christ is present in many places at the same time, that is to say, wherever the Sacrament is consecrated. And in order that human reason may the more willingly pay its homage to this great mystery, there have not been wanting, as an aid to faith, certain prodigies wrought in His honour, both in ancient times and in our own, of which in more than one place there exist public and notable records and memorials. It is plain that by this Sacrament faith is fed, in it the mind finds its nourishment, the objections of rationalists are brought to naught, and abundant light is thrown on the supernatural order. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

Pope Leo XIII went on to explain that the results of an abandonment of the worthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament and of time spent before It in fervent prayer are tragic for societies, which can be set aright only by the Catholic Faith. There is never any short-cut to the betterment of men and/or the world in which they live at any given point in time. It is the Faith and only the Faith that can help souls to know, to love and to serve God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, which alone is the repository and infallible explicator all that He has revealed in the Deposit of Faith. To Pope Leo in Mirae Caritatis:

But that decay of faith in divine things of which We have spoken is the effect not only of pride, but also of moral corruption. For if it is true that a strict morality improves the quickness of man's intellectual powers, and if on the other hand, as the maxims of pagan philosophy and the admonitions of divine wisdom combine to teach us, the keenness of the mind is blunted by bodily pleasures, how much more, in the region of revealed truths, do these same pleasures obscure the light of faith, or even, by the just judgment of God, entirely extinguish it. For these pleasures at the present day an insatiable appetite rages, infecting all classes as with an infectious disease, even from tender years. Yet even for so terrible an evil there is a remedy close at hand in the divine Eucharist. For in the first place it puts a check on lust by increasing charity, according to the words of St. Augustine, who says, speaking of charity, "As it grows, lust diminishes; when it reaches perfection, lust is no more" (De diversis quaestionibus, Ixxxiii., q. 36). Moreover the most chaste flesh of Jesus keeps down the rebellion of our flesh, as St. Cyril of Alexandria taught, "For Christ abiding in us lulls to sleep the law of the flesh which rages in our members" (Lib. iv., c. ii., in Joan., vi., 57). Then too the special and most pleasant fruit of the Eucharist is that which is signified in the words of the prophet: "What is the good thing of Him," that is, of Christ, "and what is His beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect and the wine that engendereth virgins" (Zach. ix., 17), producing, in other words, that flower and fruitage of a strong and constant purpose of virginity which, even in an age enervated by luxury, is daily multiplied and spread abroad in the Catholic Church, with those advantages to religion and to human society, wherever it is found, which are plain to see.

To this it must be added that by this same Sacrament our hope of everlasting blessedness, based on our trust in the divine assistance, is wonderfully strengthened. For the edge of that longing for happiness which is so deeply rooted in the hearts of all men from their birth is whetted even more and more by the experience of the deceitfulness of earthly goods, by the unjust violence of wicked men, and by all those other afflictions to which mind and body are subject. Now the venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist is both the source and the pledge of blessedness and of glory, and this, not for the soul alone, but for the body also. For it enriches the soul with an abundance of heavenly blessings, and fills it with a sweet joy which far surpasses man's hope and expectations; it sustains him in adversity, strengthens him in the spiritual combat, preserves him for life everlasting, and as a special provision for the journey accompanies him thither. And in the frail and perishable body that divine Host, which is the immortal Body of Christ, implants a principle of resurrection, a seed of immortality, which one day must germinate. That to this source man's soul and body will be indebted for both these boons has been the constant teaching of the Church, which has dutifully reaffirmed the affirmation of Christ: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (St. John vi., 55).

In connection with this matter it is of importance to consider that in the Eucharist, seeing that it was instituted by Christ as "a perpetual memorial of His Passion" (Opusc. Ivii. Offic. de festo Corporis Christi), is proclaimed to the Christian the necessity of a salutary selfchastisement. For Jesus said to those first priests of His: "Do this in memory of Me" (Luke xxii, 18); that is to say, do this for the commemoration of My pains, My sorrows, My grievous afflictions, My death upon the Cross. Wherefore this Sacrament is at the same time a Sacrifice, seasonable throughout the entire period of our penance; and it is likewise a standing exhortation to all manner of toil, and a solemn and severe rebuke to those carnal pleasures which some are not ashamed so highly to praise and extol: "As often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, ye shall announce the death of the Lord, until He come" (1 Cor. xi., 26).

Furthermore, if anyone will diligently examine into the causes of the evils of our day, he will find that they arise from this, that as charity towards God has grown cold, the mutual charity of men among themselves has likewise cooled. Men have forgotten that they are children of God and brethren in Jesus Christ; they care for nothing except their own individual interests; the interests and the rights of others they not only make light of, but often attack and invade. Hence frequent disturbances and strifes between class and class: arrogance, oppression, fraud on the part of the more powerful: misery, envy, and turbulence among the poor. These are evils for which it is in vain to seek a remedy in legislation, in threats of penalties to be incurred, or in any other device of merely human prudence. Our chief care and endeavour ought to be, according to the admonitions which We have more than once given at considerable length, to secure the union of classes in a mutual interchange of dutiful services, a union which, having its origin in God, shall issue in deeds that reflect the true spirit of Jesus Christ and a genuine charity. This charity Christ brought into the world, with it He would have all hearts on fire. For it alone is capable of affording to soul and body alike, even in this life, a foretaste of blessedness; since it restrains man's inordinate self-love, and puts a check on avarice, which "is the root of all evil" (1 Tim. vi., 10). And whereas it is right to uphold all the claims of justice as between the various classes of society, nevertheless it is only with the efficacious aid of charity, which tempers justice, that the "equality" which St. Paul commended (2 Cor. viii., 14), and which is so salutary for human society, can be established and maintained. This then is what Christ intended when he instituted this Venerable Sacrament, namely, by awakening charity towards God to promote mutual charity among men. For the latter, as is plain, is by its very nature rooted in the former, and springs from it by a kind of spontaneous growth. Nor is it possible that there should be any lack of charity among men, or rather it must needs be enkindled and flourish, if men would but ponder well the charity which Christ has shown in this Sacrament. For in it He has not only given a splendid manifestation of His power and wisdom, but "has in a manner poured out the riches of His divine love towards men" (Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII., De Euch. c. ii.). Having before our eyes this noble example set us by Christ, Who bestows on us all that He has assuredly we ought to love and help one another to the utmost, being daily more closely united by the strong bond of brotherhood. Add to this that the outward and visible elements of this Sacrament supply a singularly appropriate stimulus to union. On this topic St. Cyprian writes: "In a word the Lord's sacrifice symbolises the oneness of heart, guaranteed by a persevering and inviolable charity, which should prevail among Christians. For when our Lord calls His Body bread, a substance which is kneaded together out of many grains, He indicates that we His people, whom He sustains, are bound together in close union; and when He speaks of His Blood as wine, in which the juice pressed from many clusters of grapes is mingled in one fluid, He likewise indicates that we His flock are by the commingling of a multitude of persons made one" (Ep. 96 ad Magnum n. 5 (al.6)). In like manner the angelic Doctor, adopting the sentiments of St. Augustine (Tract. xxxvi., in Joan nn. 13, 17), writes: "Our Lord has bequeathed to us His Body and Blood under the form of substances in which a multitude of things have been reduced to unity, for one of them, namely bread, consisting as it does of many grains is yet one, and the other, that is to say wine, has its unity of being from the confluent juice of many grapes; and therefore St. Augustine elsewhere says: 'O Sacrament of mercy, O sign of unity, O bond of charity!' " (Summ. Theol. P. III., q. Ixxix., a. 1. . All of which is confirmed by the declaration of the Council of Trent that Christ left the Eucharist in His Church "as a symbol of that unity and charity whereby He would have all Christians mutually joined and united. . . a symbol of that one body of which He is Himself the head, and to which He would have us, as members attached by the closest bonds of faith, hope, and charity" (Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII., De Euchar., c. ii.). The same idea had been expressed by St. Paul when he wrote: "For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all we who partake of the one bread" (I Cor. x., 17). Very beautiful and joyful too is the spectacle of Christian brotherhood and social equality which is afforded when men of all conditions, gentle and simple, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, gather round the holy altar, all sharing alike in this heavenly banquet. And if in the records of the Church it is deservedly reckoned to the special credit of its first ages that "the multitude of the believers had but one heart and one soul" (Acts iv., 32), there can be no shadow of doubt that this immense blessing was due to their frequent meetings at the Divine table; for we find it recorded of them: "They were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles and in the communion of the breaking of bread" (Acts ii., 42).

Besides all this, the grace of mutual charity among the living, which derives from the Sacrament of the Eucharist so great an increase of strength, is further extended by virtue of the Sacrifice to all those who are numbered in the Communion of Saints. For the Communion of Saints, as everyone knows, is nothing but the mutual communication of help, expiation, prayers, blessings, among all the faithful, who, whether they have already attained to the heavenly country, or are detained in the purgatorial fire, or are yet exiles here on earth, all enjoy the common franchise of that city whereof Christ is the head, and the constitution is charity. For faith teaches us, that although the venerable Sacrifice may be lawfully offered to God alone, yet it may be celebrated in honour of the saints reigning in heaven with God Who has crowned them, in order that we may gain for ourselves their patronage. And it may also be offered-in accordance with an apostolic tradition-for the purpose of expiating the sins of those of the brethren who, having died in the Lord, have not yet fully paid the penalty of their transgressions.

That genuine charity, therefore, which knows how to do and to suffer all things for the salvation and the benefit of all, leaps forth with all the heat and energy of a flame from that most holy Eucharist in which Christ Himself is present and lives, in which He indulges to the utmost. His love towards us, and under the impulse of that divine love ceaselessly renews His Sacrifice. And thus it is not difficult to see whence the arduous labours of apostolic men, and whence those innumerable designs of every kind for the welfare of the human race which have been set on foot among Catholics, derive their origin, their strength, their permanence, their success. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

When was the last time you heard someone in public life citing the example of Saint Henry the Emperor or Saint Edward the Confessor or Saint Stephen of Hungary or Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia or Saint Louis IX, King of France, or Saint Casimir of Poland or Saint Elizabeth of Hungary as the example of civil leadership that would shape their own exercise of civil power? No, candidates for public office cite the "plaster saints" of Modernity who reject the Social Reign of Christ the King as their models for civil governance, believing in the "sovereignty of the people" and/or in some sort of nebulous, generic "common ground" about God that is of the essence of the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry, as Pope Leo XIII explained in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.

Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1888.)

Those who give no thought to eternity can lie with impunity, and they can also ignore with impunity the simple truth that the just purposes of civil government is to advance the common temporal good of men in light of First and Last Things and to thus to foster those conditions wherein citizens can better sanctify and save their immortal souls, upon which rests the fate of both men and their nations.

Moreover, men in public life must be duly submissive to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. Today. However even Catholics in public life such as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., have, to call to mind the words of Father Edward Leen in Why the Cross? quoted immediately below, are “too eager to manage their own temporal affairs. They resent what they call the Church's interference”:

For men, as a rule, have but shown themselves too eager to manage their own temporal affairs. They resent what they call the Church's interference. This resentment culminates in a deliberate exclusion of the Church from the councils of peoples. Even at the best of times, when States were not yet professedly secularist, what jealousy was always manifested with regard to the action of the Church in secular matters! How slow men were to take her advice! How her efforts for procuring the temporal welfare of men were hampered, thwarted and positively resisted!

The gradual silencing of the voice of Christianity in the councils of the nations is the evil cause of the chaotic conditions of modern civilized life. This issue was inevitable. For though the Church's wisdom is primarily in the domain of things of the world to come, yet she is wise, too, with regard to the things of the world that is. She is not for the world, and yet she is able and even ready to act as if she were equipped specially to procure the temporal good of men.  [See Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 134.] She is able and willing to give men directions in temporal matters, which, if followed, will result in temporal prosperity. She is too wise to promote unrealizable Utopias, from which all suffering and toil will be banished. She can give prudent directions how to devise measures for the mitigation of inevitable hardships and the elimination of unnecessary evils. If rulers and ruled alike listened to her voice, the authentic voice of Christianity, what a change would come over the world! It would not cease to be a vale of tears but would cease to be a vale of savage strife. It would not become an earthly Paradise but would become an earth where man's dreams of a satisfying order of things could be realized. (Father Edward Leen, Why the Cross?, originally published by Sheed & Ward in 1938, and republished in 2001 by Scepter Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey,  pp. 14-15.)

The world in which we live, however, has rejected the voice of Holy Mother Church, who herself has been forced into the catacombs by the twin revolutions of Modernity and Modernism.

Thus, all the secular commentaries cited above are good as far as they go. However, we should have learned by now that those who deny the existence of supernatural truths that do not depend upon human existence for their binding force or validity will just as readily deny facts in natural order of things as they lie without regard to the binding precepts of the Eighth Commandment and without even thought about the loss of their immortal souls, whose salvation has been won for us all at the high cost of the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy on Good Friday.

Moreover, we should have learned by now that those in public life who are “leftists” will inevitably “skate” whenever they break the laws God and the just laws of men without much in the way of earthly consequences. Double standards galore exist whereby those in the camp of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” are held to high and exacting standards, including endless investigations into crimes and offenses, real or concocted, while those in the camp of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” cry “partisanship” when their own misdeeds are exposed for all to see.

I have lived long enough to see Republicans investigate the likes of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Jr. (Whitewatergate, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate, Monicagate), Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton Whitewatergate, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate, Benghazigate, Ronald Brown (Chinagate), Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro  , Eric Himpton Holder (Fast and Furious), and Lois Lerner to know that NOTHING—as in N-O-T-H-I-N-G—ever happens, either politically or legally, to miscreants and felons who, in the natural order of things, should have faced prosecution. Those who are all agitated about the utter hypocrisy associated with Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, denouncing as “irresponsible” his hated predecessor’s retention of classified documents after he left the White House two years ago yesterday, January 20, 2021, the Feast of Saints Fabian and Sebastian, while having such documents of his very own in the Red China-subsidized University of Pennsylvania Biden Center and in his home in Wilmington, Delaware, had better get a grip on reality as, although some Democrats seem eager to ditch the career grifter who has been willing to make lots and lots of money from the Red Chinese over the years, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., will be indemnified and held harmless by the special prosecutor who is investigating what he calls an “accident.” The “left” and their stooges will never “get theirs” in this passing, mortal vale of tears.

I am reminded in this regard of the time on a Friday evening in the Fall of 1983 that the late Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., was glued to Dallas, which was being shown on the wide screen television in the recreation room of Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. Father Miceli said to me in a very excited voice, "Look, Sue Ellen's got him [John Ross Ewing, Jr., otherwise known as "J.R."] good this time!" Father Miceli was very happy about this development. (Just as aside, I knew two other priests in the conciliar structures, one of whom had an earned doctorate in sacred theology, who were similarly addicted to Dallas.) No, Sue Ellen Ewing did not “get” John Ross
Ewing, Jr., and not even the competent likes of United States Representatives James Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Kentucky) will “get” Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., or his bag man, Hunter Biden, now.

After all, Joseph Robinette Biden became President of the United States of America two years ago yesterday despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he had been proven to be a liar, plagiarist, and demagogue from the time he entered public life fifty-three years ago at the age of twenty-eight.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged ''a mistake'' in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing ''malevolent,'' that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. And he asserted that another controversy, concerning recent reports of his using material from others' speeches without attribution, was ''much ado about nothing.''

Mr. Biden, the 44-year-old Delaware Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, addressed these issues at the Capitol in a morning news conference he had called expressly for that purpose. The news conference was held just before he presided over the third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court.

To buttress his assertions of sincerity and openness, Mr. Biden released a 65-page file, obtained by the Senator from the Syracuse University College of Law, that he said contained all the records of his years there. It disclosed relatively poor grades in college and law school, mixed evaluations from teachers and details of the plagiarism. (Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not 'Malevolent'; see also Joseph Biden's Plagiarism.)

Nothing Biden does is ever “malevolent” or criminal. He is the victim of one “innocent” circumstance after another, or he made a “mistaken” or did something “stupid.” He never “intended” to do this or that, of course.

The plagiarism revelation was made public in September of 1987 after John Sasso, then the campaign manager for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis's campaign to secure the 1988 presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, had aired an "attack video" that placed side-by-side, split-screen footage of speeches given by Neil Kinnock, the Trotskyite leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, and the then Senator Biden on foreign policy that were identical (here is a link to a compilation of news reports from 1987 about Biden’s legendary lies: Joe Biden's lies are legendary). Kinnock was then the leader of the Labour Party, which was out of power in the United Kingdom from May 4, 1979, to May 2, 1997, at which point the party, then led by Tony Blair, defeated the Conservative (or Tory) Party in the general elections, ousting Margaret Thatcher's successor, John Major, as prime minister. Biden and Kinnock were soulmates on matters of foreign policy.

Why not steal Kinnock's speech?

After all, it was "much ado about nothing."

Well, despite Biden's willingness to let his fellow pro-abortion Catholic, Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), to his bidding for him by demonizing United States Judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Robert Bork during the latter's confirmation hearings in 1987 to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, he had to fold up his presidential aspirations for 1988 soon after the plagiarism became known, following the departure of former United States Senator Gary Hart (D-South Dakota), whose "monkey business" forced him out of the race on May 8, 1987 (he reentered seven months later principally to become eligible for Federal matching funds to pay off his campaign debt). The gaffe-prone Biden thought that he could win that presidential nomination he so coveted if he only waited a little while, having to settle for the vice presidency under Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, a first-class demagogue in his own right, after in 2008 campaign fizzled out after receiving four percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008.

The loose-mouthed, foul-mouthed (see When "Boys Will Be Boys" They Grow Up to Be Men Like Joe Biden) was a walking demagogue throughout the course of his eight years as the nation's forty-seventh vice president. It was in 2011 that Biden accused House Republicans associated with the loosely organized Taxed Enough Already movement (TEA Party) of being "terrorists" for seeking to achieve significant cuts in Federal spending in exchange for the raising of the national debt ceiling. True to his lying self, Biden denied that he used the word terrorism:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”

Biden’s office initially declined to comment about what the vice president said inside the closed-door session, but after POLITICO published the remarks, spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said: “The word was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”

Biden later denied he used that term in an interview with CBS.

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals. (Joe Biden likened tea partiers to terrorists.)

Biden lies.

Biden denies that he lies.

He has used this same pattern of demagoguery and deceit throughout his entire life, including his repeatedly blaming a deceased truck driver for the death of his first wife and infant daughter in a traffic accident in 1972 even though she was at fault and the driver was never ticketed by the police or charged with any crime:

The worst moment of Joseph R. Biden’s life — the 1972 car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter — has drawn renewed attention over a falsehood that the former vice president repeated for years: that the other driver was drunk.

From 2001-07, Mr. Biden indicated at least twice that the tractor-trailer driver who hit his wife’s car had been drinking, even though the state official who oversaw the investigation and the driver’s daughter said that wasn’t true.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Pamela Hamill, the daughter of driver Curtis C. Dunn, called on Mr. Biden to apologize publicly after he told a crowd that her father “drank his lunch” before the accident, according to a 2008 article in the Newark [Delaware] Post.

“A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly and killed my daughter instantly and hospitalized my two sons,” Mr. Biden said in 2007.

In a 2001 speech at the University of Delaware, he referred to an “errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive” and “hit my children and my wife and killed them,” according to a 2008 report in NewsBusters, citing a 2001 “Inside Edition” report.

Mr. Biden apparently stopped making the claim after a burst of media attention.

In a January article in Politico, Ms. Hamill said that Mr. Biden called her to apologize following a 2009 CBS report on the discrepancy.

“He apologized for hurting my family in any way,” she said. “So we accepted that — and kind of end of story from there.”

Mr. Dunn, who died in 1999, hit the station wagon driven by 30-year-old Neilia Biden as she drove to buy a Christmas tree with the Bidens’ three young children: Beau, 4; Hunter, 3, and Naomi, 13 months.

The rig overturned as Mr. Dunn swerved to avoid the collision, but he “ran to the wrecked car and was the first to offer assistance,” the Post reported.

Now-retired Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome O. Herlihy, who oversaw the investigation as chief deputy attorney general, told Politico, “She had a stop sign. The truck driver did not.”

In 2008, he told the Post that rumors about alcohol playing a role in the accident were “incorrect.”

This is awful. Did you know for years  told people his wife and 13-month-old daughter were killed by a drunk driver, when in fact the accident was tragically her fault. The truck driver was haunted by the accident until he died — Rosie memos (@almostjingo) 

Townhall’s Guy Benson called the vice president’s inaccurate references to drinking, which first appeared in 2001, “bizarre and disturbing.”

“The whole situation is sad enough, why embellish it with what amounts to be an unsupported smear of a man who — according to the authorities — was not drunk, did not cause the accident, and immediately sought to ‘render assistance’ to the victims?” asked Mr. Benson in a Thursday op-ed.

An extremely difficult and sensitive topic to cover.

Whoa: Did Joe Biden Falsely Smear the Truck Driver Involved in the Car Crash That Killed His First Wife and Daughter? 

Joe Biden Lied for Years about the Car Accident that Claimed the Life of his Wife and Daughter

Mr. Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential primary front-runner, has been criticized for embellishing his speeches with exaggerations and inaccuracies, such as his claim that he met with Parkland students at the White House after the 2018 shooting, even though he left office in January 2017.

RedState’s Elizabeth Vaughn said Mr. Biden’s “mischaracterization of this accident doesn’t surprise me.”

“It’s part of a pattern of behavior that we’ve come to associate with Biden,” she said in a Thursday post. “He has a history of embellishing events which have occurred and occasionally inventing entire stories out of whole cloth if it serves his purpose. Put another way, this man’s word is not to be trusted.”

The Biden boys recovered from injuries sustained in the crash, which happened six weeks after Mr. Biden was elected to his first term in the Senate. Beau Biden died in 2015 of cancer.

In the 2008 article, Ms. Hamill said she worried that without a Biden rebuttal, the “drunk driver” angle could eventually take root in the public narrative. The claim had already appeared in several articles about Mr. Biden leading up to the election.

“Suppose he becomes the next vice president,” she told the Post. “Movies could be made about him and books could be written about him, all falsely portraying my father as a drunk driver. We need to set the record straight and clear my father’s name right now before this goes any further.” (Joe Biden's false claim about drunken driver draws renewed scrutiny.)

I, for one, am amazed that anyone finds the pro-abort, pro-perversity, pro-open border, pro-everything bad grafter Biden’s mendacious behavior in the White House to be in any way extraordinary. The man has lived his entire life lying with impunity, and he is also a greedy, slimy, transparent crook as well:

Government Accountability Institute President and host of The Drill Down podcast Peter Schweizer, on Wednesday’s edition  Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” said the finances of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter are “intertwined,” which is not legal.

Ingraham said, “One of the scandals the media laughs off is the secretive selling of Hunter Biden’s lousy artwork. We know at some point in the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars as written in The Atlantic will be funneled to the son of a sitting president, and none of us will know anything about who sent the money or where it originally came. From.”

She asked, “Peter, how likely is it that foreign buyers are going to be using this obvious opportunity to shove more money into Hunter’s pockets or other family members, mainly the president?”

Schweizer said, “I think it is very likely and if you go through the Hunter Biden emails, as I have been doing with the team for close to a year, scouring them. What you find out very quickly is that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s finances are intertwined. They are not separate entities. There are numerous examples of Hunter Biden is paying bills for his father. Which, by the way, is not legal. Politicians can get occasional gifts from family members, but you cannot subsidize the lifestyle of a politician. That is what Hunter Biden is doing.”

He added, “When Hunter Biden is doing foreign deals, whether they are these deals in Beijing where he gets checks for $5 million and there’s no evidence he really did anything, or whether he’s putting together a painting and putting that up for sale, at the end of the day the way the business model works in the Biden family is that the finances are intertwined. Joe Biden will benefit one way or another from what they are doing. Let’s be clear, Hunter Biden’s friend, this gallery owner that is going to be selling his artwork, has spoken in the past about the desire to have ambitious plans to seek and find buyers in China.” (Hunter Biden, Joe Biden Finances Are Illegally 'Intertwined'.)

Crooks lie.

Crooks lie all the time.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is a thief, a crook, a bum, a deranged demagogue, a thug, and an enabler of George Soros-sponsored harassment of Democratic Party opponents, including United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) and Joseph Manchin (D-West Virginia), of his $3.5 trillion budget and $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill (see George Soros-Linked Group Behind Public Harassment of Kyrsten Sinema).

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, lies are indeed legendary, but perhaps more legendary is his hypocrisy when he becomes righteous in the condemnation of others for the “mistakes” or “stupid things” he has done. Consider how he personally blocked the confirmation of President James Earl “The Appeaser” Carter, Jr.’s., nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former John Fitzgerald Kennedy speechwriter and hagiographer Theodore Sorensen, back forty-six years ago:

Joe Biden reportedly played an integral role in then-President Jimmy Carter withdrawing his selection to lead the CIA during the late 1970s — over the apparent mishandling of classified documents.

In 1977, the first full year of Carter's tenure as commander-in-chief, American lawyer Ted Sorensen never got past the Senate confirmation process, largely stemming from his question-and-answer session with Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware.

According to Fox News, Sorensen admitted to taking boxes of classified records home with him after leaving the White House in 1964 — after working for the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson — as a means of using certain materials for a Kennedy biography.

Around that time, Democrat Biden aligned with Senate Republicans to block Sorensen from being confirmed by the chamber. 

Biden also suggested Sorensen may have violated the Espionage Act of 1917, according to Fox News.

During the Senate confirmation hearing, Biden seemingly mocked Sorensen for "carelessly" ignoring the laws pertaining to possessing classified materials.

"If [Sorenson] did so, can he now bring the activities of the intelligence community within the strict limits of the law?" Biden rhetorically asked then. "We will expect that in the future of intelligence agencies. If that is to be the case, then we must hold the director ... accountable as well."

Shortly after being grilled on Capitol Hill, Sorensen didn't contest Carter's withdrawn nomination.

However, according to a Washington Post report from 1977, the embattled former White House staffer noted his "handling of classified information was at all times in accordance with the then-existing laws, regulations and practices."

Fast forward to the present: As the current president, Biden has expressed no public remorse for batches of classified materials being discovered either at his Washington, D.C., office (the Penn Biden Center) or his Delaware home — from a time when Biden was vice president, a position that holds no powers of declassifying top-secret government documents.

And as Newsmax chronicled Thursday, some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about the information from a recent Washington Post report, suggesting the White House and DOJ had previously agreed to obscure President Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents from public view — at least before CBS News contacted the White House about the first batch of improperly stored sensitive documents.

The White House, which has been accused of shielding the press from access to DOJ representatives, maintains that it will continue to cooperate with federal agencies, including Attorney General Merrick Garland's special counsel appointment Robert Hur. (Biden Thwarted CIA Director Pick in 1977 Over Classified Docs Scandal.)

No matter how this current dog and pony show ends, and it will probably end without any charges being brought against Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., for yet another of his “mistakes,” the fact remains that everyone, including the powerful, wealthy, and the celebrated, will have to stand before Christ the King when they die. Those who have sinned with impunity without any inward remorse or outward sign of contribution and, worse yet, have suborned sin and sought to protect it under cover of law while persecuting those who oppose their promotion of sin fall, objectively speaking, into the category of the likes of sinners whose deaths are described as follows by Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri:

"Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee." LUKE xix. 43.

SEEING from a distance the city of Jerusalem, in which the Jews were soon to put him to death, Jesus Christ wept over it. "Videns civitatern flevit super illam." Our merciful Redeemer wept at the consideration of the chastisement which was soon to be inflicted on the city, and which he foretold to her inhabitants. ”Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee. ” Unhappy city! thou shalt one day see thyself encompassed by enemies, who shall beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children in thee, and shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone. Most beloved brethren, this unhappy city is a figure of the soul of a sinner, who, at the hour of death, shall find himself surrounded by his enemies first, by remorse of conscience; secondly, by the assaults of the devils; and thirdly, by the fears of eternal death.

First Point. The sinner at death shall be tortured by remorses of conscience.
1. "Their soul shall die in a storm." (Job xxxvi. 14.) The unhappy sinners who remain in sin die in a tempest, with which God has beforehand threatened them. ”A tempest shall break out and come upon the head of the wicked." (Jer. xxiii. 19.) At the commencement of his illness the sinner is not troubled by remorse or fear; because his relatives, friends, physicians, and all tell him that his sickness is not dangerous; thus he is deceived and hopes to recover. But when his illness increases, and malignant symptoms, the harbingers of approaching death, begin to appear, then the storm with which the Lord has threatened the wicked shall commence. "When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand." (Prov. i. 27.) This tempest shall be formed as well by the pains of sickness as by the fear of being obliged to depart from this earth, and to leave all things; but still more by the remorses of conscience, which shall place before his eyes all the irregularities of his past life. ”They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them." (Wis. iv. 20.) Then shall his sins rush upon his mind, and fill him with terror. His iniquities shall stand against him to convict him, and, without the aid of other testimony, shall assail him, and prove that he deserves hell.

2. The dying sinner will confess his sins; but, according to St. Augustine, “The repentance which is sought from a sick man is infirm." (Serm, xxxvii., de Temp.) And St. Jerome says, that of a hundred thousand sinners who continue till death in the state of sin, scarcely one shall be saved. ”Vix de centum milibus, quorum mala vita fuit, meretur in morte a Deo indulgentiam, unus." (Epis. de Mort. Eus.) St. Vincent Ferrer writes, that it is a greater miracle to save such sinners, than to raise the dead to life. ”Majus miraculum est, quod male viventes faciant bonum finem, quam suscitare mortuos." (Serm. i., de Nativ. Virgin.) They shall feel convinced of the evil they have done; they will wish, but shall not be able, to detest it. Antiochus understood the malice of his sins when he said: ”Now I remember the evils that I have done in Jerusalem." (1 Mach. vi. 12.) He remembered his sins, but did not detest them. He died in despair and oppressed with great sadness, saying: "Behold, I perish with great grief in a strange land" (v. 13). According to St. Fulgentius, the same happened to Saul at the hour of death: he remembered his sins; he dreaded the punishment which they deserved; but he did not detest them. “Non odit quid fecerat, sed timuit quod nolebat."

3. Oh! how difficult is it for a sinner, who has slept many years in sin, to repent sincerely at the hour of death, when his mind is darkened, and his heart hardened!”His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smiths anvil." (Job xli. 15.) During life, instead of yielding to the graces and calls of God, he became more obdurate, as the anvil is hardened by repeated strokes of the hammer. ”A hard heart shall fare evil at the last." (Eccl. iii. 27.) By loving sin till death, he has loved the danger of his damnation, and therefore God will justly permit him to perish in the danger in which he wished to live till death.

4. St. Augustine says, that he who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it, will scarcely detest it as he ought at the hour of death; for he will then detest it, not through a hatred of sin, but through necessity. ”Qui prius a peccato relinquitur, quam ipse relinquat, non libere, sed quasi ex necessitate condemnat." But how shall he be able to hate from his heart the sins which he has loved till death? He must love the enemy whom till then he has hated, and he must hate the person whom he has till that moment loved. Oh! what mountains must he pass! He shall probably meet with a fate similar to that of a certain person, who kept in confinement a great number of wild beasts in order to let them loose on the enemies who might assail him. But the wild beasts, as soon as he unchained them, instead of attacking his enemies, devoured himself. When the sinner will wish to drive away his iniquities, they shall cause his destruction, either by complacency in objects till then loved, or by despair of pardon at the sight of their numbers and enormity. "Evils shall catch the unjust man unto destruction." (Ps. cxxxix. 12.) St. Bernard says, that at death the sinner shall see himself chained and bound by his sins. “We are your works; we will not desert you." We will not leave you; we will accompany you to judgment, and will be your companions for all eternity in hell.
Second Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the assaults of the devils.

5. “The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." (Apoc. xii. 12.) At death the devil exerts all his powers to secure the soul that is about to leave this world; for he knows, from the symptoms of the disease, that he has but little time to gain her for eternity. The Council of Trent teaches that Jesus Christ has left us the sacrament of Extreme Unction as a most powerful defence against the temptations of the devil at the hour of death. “Extremæ Unctionis sacramento finem vitæ tanquam firmissimo quodam præsidio munivit." And the holy council adds, that there is no time in which the enemy combats against us with so much violence in order to effect our damnation, and to make us despair of the divine mercy, as at the end of life. ”N ullum tempus est, quo vehementius ille omnes suæ versutiæ nervos intendat at perendos, nos penitus, et a fiducia, etiam, si possit, divinæ misericordiæ deturbandos, quam cum impendere nobis exitum vitæ perspicet." (Sess. 14, cap. ix. Doctr. de Sacr. Extr. Unct.)

6. Oh! how terrible are the assaults and snares of the devil against the souls of dying persons, even though they have led a holy life! After his recovery from a most severe illness, the holy king Eleazar said, that the temptations by which the devil assails men at death, can be conceived only by him who has felt them. We read in the life of St. Andrew Avelliuo, that in his agony he had so fierce a combat with hell, that all the religious present were seized with trembling. They perceived that, in consequence of the agitation, his face swelled, and became black, all his members trembled, and a flood of tears gushed from his eyes. All began to weep through compassion, and were rilled with terror at the sight of a saint dying in such a manner. But they were afterwards consoled, when they saw that as soon as an image of most holy Mary was held before him, he became perfectly calm, and breathed forth his blessed soul with great joy.

7. Now, if this happens to the saints, what shall become of poor sinners, who have lived in sin till death? At that awful moment the devil does not come alone to tempt them in a thousand ways, in order to bring them to eternal perdition, but he calls companions to his assistance. "Their house shall be filled with serpents." (Isa. xiii. 21.) When a Christian is about to leave this world, his house is filled with devils, who unite together in order to effect his ruin. "All her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits." (Lamen. i. 3.) All his enemies will encompass him in the straits of death. One shall say: Be not afraid; you shall not die of this sickness! Another will say: You have been for so many years deaf to the calls of God, and can you now expect that he will save you? Another will ask: How can you repair the frauds of your past life, and the injuries you have done to your neighbour in his property and character? Another shall ask: What hope can there be for you? Do you not see that all your confessions have been null that they have been made without true sorrow, and without a firm purpose of amendment? How can you repair them with this heart, which you feel so hard? Do you not see that you are lost? And in the midst of these straits and attacks of despair, the dying sinner, full of agitation and confusion, must pass into eternity. “The people shall be troubled and they shall pass." (Job xxxiv 20.)

Third Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the fears of eternal death.

8. Miserable the sick man who takes to his bed in the state of mortal sin! He that lives in sin till death shall die in sin. "You shall die in your sin." (John viii. 21.) It is true that, in whatsoever hour the sinner is converted, God promises to pardon him; but to no sinner has God promised the grace of conversion at the hour of death. ”Seek the Lord while he may be found." (Isa. iv. 6.) Then, there is for some sinners a time when they shall seek God and shall not find him. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me." (John vii. 34.) The unhappy beings will go to confession at the hour of death; they will promise and weep, and ask mercy of God, but without knowing what they do. A man who sees himself under the feet of a foe pointing a dagger to his throat, will shed tears, ask pardon, and promise to serve his enemy as a slave during the remainder of his life. But, will the enemy believe him? No; he will feel convinced that his words are not sincere that his object is to escape from his hands, and that, should he be pardoned, he will become more hostile than ever. In like manner, how can God pardon the dying sinner, when he sees that all his acts of sorrow, and all his promises, proceed not from the heart, but from a dread of death and of approaching damnation.

9. In the recommendation of the departing soul, the assisting priest prays to the Lord, saying: ”Recognize, O Lord, thy creature." But God answers: I know that he is my creature; but, instead of regarding me as his Creator, he has treated me as an enemy. The priest continues his prayer, and says: ”Remember not his past iniquities. ” I would, replies the Lord, pardon all the past sins of his youth; but he has continued to despise me till this moment the very hour of his death. ”They have turned their back upon me, and not their face: and, in the time of affliction, they will say: Arise, and deliver us. Where are the gods which thou hast made thee? let them rise and deliver thee." (Jer. ii. 27, 28.) You, says the Lord, have turned your back upon me till death; "and do you now want me to deliver you from vengeance? Invoke your own gods the creatures, the riches, the friends you loved more than you loved me. Call them now to come to your assistance, and to save you from hell, which is open to receive you. It now justly belongs to me to take vengeance on the insults you have offered me. You have despised my threats against obstinate sinners, and have paid no regard to them. ”Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide." (Deut. xxxii. 35.) The time of my vengeance is now arrived; it is but just to execute it. This is precisely what happened to a certain person in Madrid, who led a wicked life, but, at the sight of the unhappy death of a companion, went to confession, and resolved to enter a strict religious order. But, in consequence of having neglected to put his resolution into immediate execution, he relapsed into his former irregularities. Being reduced to great want, he wandered about the world, and fell sick at Lima. From the hospital in which he took refuge he sent for a confessor, and promised again to change his life, and to enter religion. But, having recovered from his illness, he returned to his wickedness; and, behold! the vengeance of God fell upon him. One day, his confessor, who was a missionary, in passing over a mountain, heard a noise, which appeared to be the howling of a wild beast. He drew near the place from which the noise proceeded, and saw a dying man, half rotten, and howling through despair. He addressed to him some words of consolation. The sick man, opening his eyes, recognized the missionary, and said: Have you, too, come to he a witness of the justice of God? I am the man who made my confession in the hospital of Lima. I then promised to change my life, but have not done so; and now I die in despair. And thus the miserable man, amid these acts of despair, breathed forth his unhappy soul. These facts are related by Father Charles Bovio (part iii., example 9).

10. Let us conclude the discourse. Tell me, brethren, were a person in sin seized with apoplexy, and instantly deprived of his senses, what sentiments of pity would you feel at seeing him die in this state; without the sacraments, and without signs of repentance! Is not he a fool, who, when he has time to be reconciled with God, continues in sin, or returns to his sins, and thus exposes himself to the danger of dying suddenly, and of dying in sin? "At what hour you think not," says Jesus Christ, "the Son of Man will come," (Luke xiii. 40.) An unprovided death, which has happened to so many, may also happen to each of us. And it is necessary to understand, that all who lead a bad life, meet with an unprovided death, though their last illness may allow them some time to prepare for eternity; for the days of that mortal illness are days of darkness days of confusion, in which it is difficult, and even morally impossible, to adjust a conscience burdened with many sins. Tell me, brethren, if you were now at the point of death, given over by physicians, and in the last agony, how ardently would you desire another month, or another week, to settle the accounts you must render to God! And God gives you this time. He calls you, and warns you of the danger of damnation to which you are exposed. Give yourself, then, instantly to God. What do you wait for? Will you wait till he sends you to hell?” Walk whilst you have light." (John xii. 35.) Avail yourselves of this time and this light, which God gives you at this moment, and now, while it is in your power, repent of all your past sins; for, a time shall come when you will be no longer able to avert the punishment which they deserve.

[I entreat my reader to read Sermon xliv., or the Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, on the practical death, or that which practically happens at the death of men of the world. I know by experience that though it does not contain Latin texts, whenever I preached that sermon, it produced a great impression, and left the audience full of terror. A greater impression is made by practical than by speculative truths.] (Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year by St Alphonsus Liguori in .pdf format.)

We had better to pray to Our Lady, the August Queen of Heaven, that we live a life of such moral rectitude that we will not, as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., has done throughout his entire life and continues to do to this very moment, make excuses for our sins by denying that they are sins in the first place, which calls to mind the following words of Psalm 104:

I have cried to thee, O Lord, hear me: hearken to my voice, when I cry to thee. [2] Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight; the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice. [3] Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips. [4] Incline not my heart to evil words; to make excuses in sins. With men that work iniquity: and I will not communicate with the choicest of them. ... [5] The just shall correct me in mercy, and shall reprove me: but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head. For my prayer also shall still be against the things with which they are well pleased:

Their judges falling upon the rock have been swallowed up. They shall hear my words, for they have prevailed: ... [7] As when the thickness of the earth is broken up upon the ground: Our bones are scattered by the side of hell. ... [8] But o to thee, O Lord, Lord, are my eyes: in thee have I put my trust, take not away my soul. ... [9] Keep me from the snare, which they have laid for me, and from the stumblingblocks of them that work iniquity. ... [10] The wicked shall fall in his net: I am alone until I pass. (Psalm 140.)

It is hard work to save one’s immortal soul, and it becomes harder still if one becomes arrogantly steadfast in his own impeccability and invincibility.

In humility, therefore, must we pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day so that, far from being immersed in the dog and pony shows produced by forgettable naturalists, we will be ever ready to accept with equanimity of soul the death that God has from all eternity fashioned for us no matter where and when it should overtake us.

May Our Lady pray for us all now, and at the hour of our death!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.    

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saints Vincent and Anastasius, pray for us.